Declaring Victory: Dig a Hole in the Meadow for BAN

Bluegrass Arkansas history meets African American Rap.

Dig a Hole, Dig a Hole in the meadow, dig a hole in the cold cold ground.

This racist boycott of poor people who repair and reuse rich people stuff is over 2015.



Plenty to read here if you've just stumbled upon #freejoebenson #freehurricanebenson

It seems the BBC cut a wire on a TV and gave it to a Nigerian expat, and he sold it to his friend in Lagos, who repairs them, who resold it to to the BBC for 40Quid (about $65), which is about roughly 30 times the value of the scrap copper etc.

The BBC ran the story that the Nigerian exPat was "exporting e-waste" and the poor bugger got 16 months prison time.

The UN Environmental Programme meanwhile analyzed sea containers, including Poor Bugger Benson's, and found 85-93% totally good, working and repaired items.  That isn't "e-waste".

But Mr. Benson is in jail.

And all you people dancing for #povertyporn, all you #parsitesofthepoor, you #whitesaviorcomplex who are surprised to find yourselves hashtagged are - I hope - gonna have this song (from United World College UWC veteran band Gangstagrass) ringing in your ears when the media asks you where you got the statistic that 80% of electronics exports are dumped and burned by #primitives?

BAN.org

I'm not going to Africa to prove anything. It has been proved and acknowledged.  Joe Benson is innocent and is in jail because media believed a fake, disavowed statistic.

Longtime readers know I've been saying this for a long time.

Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow...


retroworks (652802) writes"What could possibly be worse than dumping 75%-80% of obsolete used "e-waste" in African dumps to be burned by children scavenging wires? What could be worse than violating international law?

How about lying that the crimes occurred in the first place?

Ghanain Emmanuel Nyaletey, an electronics repair technician who grew up a few blocks away from Agbogbloshie, has published an editorial questioning why the press has failed to correct its false reporting on the "e-waste export crisis". In April, Nyaletey will fly back to Ghana, with reporters, working on a documentary of the "e-waste hoax". http://retroworks.blogspot.com...

Seven months after the prison sentence for UK-based, Nigerian born TV repairman Joe Benson, the original source (Basel Action Network) of the "world's largest e-waste dump" story (Agbogbloshie scrapyard in Accra, Ghana) denies ever, ever stating that it has knowledge of foreign dumping in Africa. After the Guardian and the Independent and BBC ran stories claiming to follow "cut wires", UNEP studies of the "seized containerloads" found a range of 85%-93% of used electronics imported to Ghana and Nigeria were repaired or reused. The UN funded study found that the used electronics were more likely to be used than brand new product (raising questions of how much ESD "waste" is being resold after warranty return), that cities in Emerging Markets were generating up to 1/3 per capita as much electronic scrap as OECD nations (which would make them a larger net source than the West). Further, the study found that "geeks of color" like Nyaletey who repair and repurpose western imports earn six times more than the national average wages for their home nation (Nigeria, Ghana studies). Nyaletey painstakingly documents the findings from the 2011 and 2012 UN funded studies, and questions why white environmentalists are still trying to "save Africa" from reuse and repair.

2012 Study of Nigeria "E-Waste Assessment" http://www.basel.int/Portals/4...
2011 Study of Ghana "E-Waste Assessment" http://www.basel.int/Portals/4...

While the environmental organization BAN now denies being the source of the "80% waste" statistic, Memorial University researcher Josh Lepawsky has tracked the organizations orphaned statistic through peer-reviewed reports on "e-waste exports" over the past 15 years, and found it to be one of the most frequent citations in scholarly research on the topic. http://scalar.usc.edu/works/re...

If not from western "waste ships", what IS the source of the electronics shown at the African dumps? Cities like Accra and Lagos have millions of households with television (and refrigerators, and computers, etc.). World Bank estimated in 2003 that Nigeria had over 6 million households with television. Twenty six percent of Ghana households had televisions 15 years ago. http://www.econstats.com/wdi/w...

Meanwhile, 3 separate documentaries are in the works based on interviews with "Hurricane" Joe Benson. Benson has provided documentation that his cost of shipping, per unit, was much greater than scrap value, and has documented how he returned unrepairable appliances back to UK recycling centers free of charge, saying there is no earthly motive to ship waste. A petition to #freejoebenson will be circulated by Nyaletey in Ghana, and is now available online http://www.ipetitions.com/peti...
http://news.slashdot.org/story..."





No comments: